Category: American Biographies

The prophet of the transcontinental railroad did not live to see it built. Theodore Judah was known as “Crazy Judah” because of his single-minded passion for driving a railroad through the Sierra Nevada mountains. His advocacy and enthusiasm for the project in California and in Washington, D.C., made possible America’s first transcontinental route. Judah constructed the first railroad in California, helped organize the Central Pacific Railroad Co., surveyed routes across the Sierra Nevada, and served as the railroad’s agent in Washington, D.C.

Yet his scouting, surveying, lobbying, and fundraising efforts defined the route and prepared the way for the technology that would unite a nation.

New Technology
Theodore Judah and the American railroad matured together. He was born in 1826 in Bridgeport, Connecticut. In 1830, America had just 23 miles of track, but the railroad businesswas about to explode. As a boy Judah studied civil engineering. By 18 he was a railroad surveyor, giving himself a practical education in technology not even two decades old.

A Practical Plan
Engineers were in high demand in the late 1840s, as tracks spread across the countryside like creeping vines. Judah’s enthusiasm earned him the nickname “Crazy Judah,” but by 1856 he and his men had built the Sacramento Valley Line, the first railroad west of the Missouri River. The following year he published a pamphlet, “A Practical Plan for Building the Pacific Railroad,” reviewing engineering problems and painting visions of a nation united by tracks — and commerce — from coast to coast. Such a railroad had been discussed for decades — but the financing and engineering obstacles were formidable.

Maps and Money
Nominated by California’s 1859 Pacific Railroad Convention, Judah traveled to Washington for a crash course in lobbying. He returned having argued persuasively for transcontinental train travel. But he realized he would have to define a practical route and find private financial backing. By October 1861, he had both: a route over the Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevada, and a group of California businessmen as partners.

Untimely Death
Soon after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Pacific Railroad Act in 1862, tensions mounted between Judah and his business associates. He decided to find new partners in New York — but he got sick during the journey, and died soon after his arrival on the east coast in late 1863. Judah’s partners, known as the Big Four — Collis Huntington, Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins, and Leland Stanford — would reap the rewards of the project Judah set in motion. When it was completed in 1869, the transcontinental railroad made the nation smaller, fostered trade, and improved frontier life.

Many of you have probably used the remarkable letter of a former slave by the name of Jourdan Anderson sent a letter to his former master. The roughly 800-word letter, which was a crafty response to a missive from Colonel P.H. Anderson, Jourdan’s former master back in Big Spring, Tennessee. Apparently, Col. Anderson had written Jourdan asking him to come on back to the big house to work. I created the timeline below from internet resources to set the historical context for my students.

Life in Tennessee 1823 to 1864

1823 General Paulding Anderson’s son Patrick Henry Anderson is born in Big Spring, TN (Wilson County)

1825 – Jourdan Anderson is born in December, some place in Tennessee.

1833 – Jourdan Anderson (age 8) becomes the slave of General Paulding Anderson and is given to his son Patrick Henry Anderson (age 10) as as playmate and personal servant

1844 – Patrick Henry Anderson (age 21) married Mary A. McGregor. She brought with her at least two servants, Amanda McGregor (age 15) and her mother, Priscilla McGregor (age 43). Patrick took several of his father’s slaves to his new home, including Jourdon.

1848 – Jourdan (age 23) married Amanda McGregor (age 19), Over 52 years of marriage theuy will have 11 children. The children born in Tennessee “seem” to have been Matilda, Catherine, Mildred (known as Milly) circa 1848, Jane circa 1851 and Felix Grundy, born on March 14, 1859. I use the word “seem” because there are no concrete records that prove Matilda and Catherine were Jourdon and Amanda’s children.

There was a Felix Grundy who served as a US Senator from Anderson’s home state of Tennessee in the 1830s who has a Tennessee county named after him

1860 – According to the 1860 census and slave schedules, Patrick Henry Anderson (age 37) has five ‘slave houses’ on his plantation totaling 32 people (19 males and 13 females) Before the start of the Civil War. P.H. Anderson had a personal estate valued at $92,000 (2.867 million in 2018 dollars)

1861 – April 12th Confederate artillery fired on the Union garrison at Fort Sumter marking the start of the Civil War ; June 8th Tennessee became the last state to secede from the Union. When the Civil War began in 1861, Jordan’s life changed very little and he still continued to dutifully work the plantation for his master with his wife.

1864 – Union Soldiers happened upon the Anderson plantation. Upon encountering Jordan, the soldiers granted him, his wife and children their freedom, making the act official with papers from the Provost Marshal General of Nashville

Upon being granted his freedom, Jordan immediately left the plantation which angered P.H. Anderson’s son Henry (age 18) to such an extent that he shot at Jordan as he was leaving, only ceasing to fire when a neighbor, George Carter, grabbed Henry’s pistol from him. Reportedly, Henry vowed to kill Jordan if he ever set foot on his property again.

Jordan and Mandy worked for a time at the Cumberland Military Hospital in Nashville under the surgeon in charge Dr. Clarke McDermont. Jordan and Mandy, with the help of Dr. Clarke McDermont, relocated to Dayton, Ohio in August of 1864

Life in Dayton, Ohio 1865 to 1905

1865 – Following his departure from the plantation, Jordan worked briefly in a Nashville field hospital, becoming close friends with a surgeon called Dr Clarke McDermont. When the Civil War ended in 1865, McDermont helped Jordan and his family move to Dayton, Ohio and put him in contact with his father-in-law, Valentine Winters, an abolitionist who helped him secure work in the town.

For the most part, Jordan’s life in Dayton was uneventful, with his time spent working with a stoic sense of quiet dignity, supporting his family and making sure his many children received a good education, something the illiterate Jordan was never given the opportunity to have. (In fact, it was noted that while still a slave, when an unspecified white girl tried to teach one of his children to read, the girl was beaten for it and forced to stop.)

The Letter

As it turns out, following the Civil War, the Anderson Plantation had fallen into complete disrepair, as is wont to happen when your entire workforce leaves pretty much all at once.

Deeply in debt, in a desperate attempt to save himself from total financial ruin, Henry reached out to the only man he knew who not only had the skills needed for the harvest, but also potentially the clout to convince some of the other slaves to return for paid work- Jordan Anderson. The letter also promised that Jordan would be paid and be treated as a free man if he returned.

He is a list of the payments requested by Jourdan from his former master and the 2017 equivalents:

One of the ironies that besets any institute devoted to the study of the US Senate is that mulling today’s Senate is akin to contemplating a patient in a long-term coma. The Senate can’t function well without compromise — and in today’s political climate, compromising is often seen as selling out. In a far more polarized era, however, Clay found a way to make the Senate work.

David and Jeanne Heidler, authors of Henry Clay: The Essential American, have tried to make sense of Clay’s stance on slavery. They tell NPR’s Steve Inskeep that it wasn’t until he fell under the tutelage of George Wythe, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, that Clay began to think seriously about the issue

The Spanish clergy, particularly Jesuits and Franciscans, played a critical role in settling the Southwest using the mission system. Over the centuries, this became the most effective means of “civilizing” natives. Their missions were designed to spread Christianity among, and establish control over, native populations. In some areas, they forced Indians to live in mission communities, where the priests taught them weaving, blacksmithing, candle-making, and leather-working, and forced them to work in orchards, workshops, and fields for long hours. The missions were most successful in New Mexico (despite an Indian revolt in 1680) and California and far less successful in Arizona and Texas. In addition, as Indians converted, a form of Catholicism that was unique to the Americas developed to accommodate the converts

La Malinche known also as Doña Marina was a Nahua woman from the Mexican Gulf Coast, who played a role in the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, acting as an interpreter, advisory, mistress, and intermediary for the Spanish conquistador, Hernán Cortés. She was one of 20 women slaves given to the Spaniards by the natives of Tabasco in 1519. Later, she became a mistress to Cortés and gave birth to his first son, Martín, who is considered one of the first Mestizos (people of mixed European and indigenous American ancestry).